Property Blog

This is how I do it, folks! These are the steps I take to find a tenant and then move them into the BTL pad. It’s probably not the best way, and it’s probably not the way a lot of Landlords do it, but it is my sweet way!
1. Make sure the property is legal [...]

This time last year I had two saving accounts’ with Halifax. I had a “Regular Saver” which gave me a 10% interest rate, and a “Guaranteed saver” which gave me a 6% interest rate. It was a good time to be saving.
A year later, both accounts have expired from their fixed rate period, and [...]

1. Be a treehugger, don’t use a Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement.
2. There’s no room for empathy- you don’t want to hear excuses. You’re running a business, not a charity shop.
If you’re a shit-fuck and ignored point #1, then redeem yourself by putting the following into your tenancy agreement:

1.1: I don’t want to hear [...]

Hi all!
I’ve very recently come stumbling back from a scandalous trip away in Vegas, hence why the stream of fresh content has been dry as a Nun’s vagina for the past few weeks. Apologies! I actually did plan on blogging while away, but it turns out I am only human, consequently I found the booze, [...]

Over the years of being a Landlord I’ve had different tenants pay me rent in various ways. In most cases, the method of payment was based on their personal financial circumstances.
Various ways I have received payment

Cash
Direct debit
Two cheques per month- one from social benefits and the second from the tenant to cover the shortfall
One complete [...]

I’m under no illusion, Landlords have a bad reputation; real bad reputation. Unfortunately, it’s a difficult stain to wipe off while so many rogue Landlords continue to operate. Over the years I’ve seen some real shady landlords do the most bizarre shit, either because they’re too lazy to do a proper job, or because they [...]

I’m pretty sure there are plenty of online property portals out there that provide a free service for landlords to advertise their BTL property. Unfortunately, I’m only familiar with a handful of them, and I’ve only used two of them. However, I’ve had a lot of success with the free services, consequently, I doubt I’ll [...]

Personally, as a Landlord, I don’t believe that tenants are paying just for a roof over their head. I believe they’re also paying for a service from thier Landlord. They’re paying for a Landlord that will help make their living experience a little easier. That’s just my personal opinion, of course. I know some landlords [...]

Auuurrghh tandoori chicken shit balls. The other day I shamefully got caught out when my new tenant asked me questions that I didn’t know the answers to! I should have known the answers, they were questions directly relating to the BTL property. Fortunately, I managed to answer the majority of his questions, but he threw [...]

Rightly or wrongly so, I found this email rather quite amusing. I always welcome constructive criticism because it usually makes a good read, but most importantly, it gives me a little something different to blog about, which is cool.
Ok, so, I was advertising a vacant property available for rent on Gumtree. Gumtree worked a charm- [...]

I’ve been looking around for the past few hours at landlord management systems, to handle small to medium property portfolios for private landlords. There are loads out there, so naturally there’s a small issue of cutting through the shit in order to find anything useful.
I haven’t had extensive experience with any landlord managements systems, but [...]

At the peak of the property boom back in November 2007, when every penniless fucker was snapping up unrealistically priced properties like they were Donald Trump, the Bank Of England base rate was at 5.75%. In the space of a little over 2 years, the rate has dropped by 5.25%, and tumbled to a low [...]

I had to get an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for the first time recently. It was made a legal requirement for all landlords back in October 2008. Booo!
Meh, waste of time and money as far as I’m concerned. From my experience, tenants don’t give a shit about how energy efficient a property is. In fact, [...]

If you’re not familiar with the micro-blogging platform Twitter, you’ve been living under a rock, but more importantly, this article may get lost on you. For everyone else…
Meh, as pointless and shitty as I think Twitter is, to my despair, it’s become another one of those geeky rages.

Apparently Facebook and Myspace wasn’t enough- we [...]

So, what happens when a tenant wants to ignore the lawfully binding Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement they agreed to and signed, by abandoning your property before due date? It happens all the time. Until recently, I wasn’t actually sure what rights the Landlord had in this situation. I only bothered to investigate further when a [...]

I guess this is another post about how awesome I think Gumtree is for finding tenants. I swear to God, I don’t work for them, or am I involved in any kind of affiliate partnership. I just like giving credit where due. As it so happens, Gumtree delivered the goods again, so here’s the credit…
The [...]

Over the last few days I’ve been openly bitching about a letting agent I’ve been dealing with. Here are the posts for a recap:
I Just Encountered A Rude Cock-Face Letting Agent
Letting Agent Is Trying To Rip Me Off
While I’ve already mentioned a few reasons why they did an extremely poor job, I never actually mentioned [...]

Ok, yesterday I wrote a blog post about how I encountered a rude, cock-face letting agent. Well, the saga continues…
Basically, the letting agent wanted £500 to find me tenants (EXTORTIONATE). Initially, I was like, “ok, cool, see what you can get me”. But using an agent was literally a backup plan, because I generally find [...]

Urgh, I fucking hate rude people with a passion, especially people that are rude unnecessarily. Admittedly, rude letting/estate agents irk me just that little bit more than the average punk. They are notoriously hated by default, so they should make extra effort to be normal beings. I recently encountered a total shithead from a local [...]

Ok, a while back I wrote a blog post about how landlords can advertise their BTL on Rightmove, by registering and paying a small fee on Letmatch.co.uk: How To Advertise Your Buy-To-Let On Rightmove. Letmatch work in partnership with an online letting agent called Visum, who put the adverts onto Rightmove.
Visum does give you the [...]

As it stands, unlike gas regulations, there is no law that says you must have a landlord electrical safety certificate. However, Landlords are obligated to ensure that all electrical appliances and fittings within the property are safe and in good working order. Failure to comply with the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994 and the The [...]

For a while now, I’ve put the idea out there that landlords can avoid letting agent fees by recruiting tenants for themselves. It’s a great way to save A LOT of money, and it’s generally a great way to capture landlording/business/people experience. I’ve avoided letting agents for the past few years, primarily because of how [...]

A month or so ago I had a tenant check out of tenancy so I was waiting for new arrivals. However, before I got new tenants to move in, I needed a one week window to coat the entire property with a lick of fresh paint. Consequently, the property was going to be empty for [...]

Errr…I found this clip on the Property Hawk website. It’s footage of what a landlord was welcomed to after a tenant had checked out. I can’t seem to find more details about the case, but have a look at the visuals…

I’m assuming the previous tenant has yet to grasp the concept of being “human”. I [...]

Thanks to a reader I was informed about an extremely vital change regarding gas safety legal obligations, which concerns ALL landlords.
On 8 September 2008, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) awarded a new 10 year contract to Capita Group plc to provide a new registration scheme for gas installers. This will begin on 1 April [...]

Now, this is an interesting/concerning situation. It’s a bit long winded, but I’ll try to be to-the-point.
Just to clarify, writing this blog post is going to be a real struggle, like 50 Cent when he was growing up in the hood. I’m going to hold back a lot of my usual obscenities, just to keep [...]

Unfortunately, they’ll be nothing of substance written in today’s blog post, I’m just going to rant a little about how I fucking hate time-wasters.
I got a phone call last week from a deceiving little bitch that prided herself on being a “professional working mother”, and was interested in viewing a property of mine. When [...]

I got an email from a chap called Steve earlier, and he was wondering whether this rental accommodation application he received via email was genuine:

Hello,
Thanks so much for your email and its quite understanding.MY DAUGHTER WILL BE ARRIVING ON THE 23th of MARCH, i have gone thru the advert one more time and everything seems [...]

I’ve mentioned several times before in various blog posts that I’m a huge fan of Gumtree when it comes to advertising properties for rent. If ANY Landlord is looking to avoid letting agent fees, I would highly recommend trying out Gumtree to get enquiries from prospective tenants. I don’t think Gumtree should be the one [...]

Some of you may have noticed that there’s a new form in the right hand sidebar which offers people with “No Money Down property deals”. It’s a service offered by the Ahuja group. Out of curiosity, has anyone heard of Ajay Ahuja before?
I hadn’t heard of him at first. In fact, when he first approached [...]

On many occasions I’ve ruthlessly attacked letting agents for their, what I feel to be, unjustified pricing strategy. Yesterday I was bitterly reminded of how extortionate and ridiculous some agents are, so here I am again, sitting on my soap box, crying like a little bitch about how backwards some things in life really are. [...]

Does anyone watch “Inside Out London”, Wednesday nights at 7:30pm? Last nights episode had a section about professional bad tenants. If anyone missed it, you can watch it on the BBC website here- it should remain there for a week or so. For those with short attention spans, don’t worry, it’s only 10mins long.
Professional bad [...]

A few days ago I wrote an article explaining how and why I thought it’s important to perform a thorough Inventory. This time I’m going to talk in detail about the entire process of protecting the security deposit. Why? Because I’ve recently taken a financial hit (lost £200) because I was sloppy with my inventory. [...]

It’s pretty amazing how a relationship can turn from warm apple pie to steaming shit over something as superficial as money. The situation I’m in so ridiculous that I don’t know whether to laugh and/or forcefully push my tenant into the arms of a psychologist.
In a previous article I talked about how a tenant of [...]

I recently got an email from someone asking me what my tips would be for a newly born private Landlord that is in the process of kicking her letting agent to the curb. Here’s, in my opinion, a generic list of principles which i’d consider “good to know” for new private landlords.
Legal Obligations
It’s imperative that [...]

Yes, yes, yes, as many had predicted, the UK Base rate cut their base rate by 0.5%, which means it now stands at 1%. Consequently, there are a handful of very, very, very lucky borrowers out there at the moment that are reaping the rewards of 0% interest rate on their loans. Those people got [...]

It’s been a long, frosty week, and it’s starting to show as I haven’t been this unshaven in a while. I’ve had a tenant move out, I’ve had 5 days to turn around the property so it looks presentable for my new tenant, and I’ve spent most mornings scraping ice off the car window as [...]

I’ve been taking viewings this week for a property that’s due to become available very shortly. Admittedly, the property isn’t in tip-top condition and people have pointed that out to me. Structurally, it’s sound, no problems there. I’m talking about the visual pleasantries. Well, visual horrors, in this case, like out-dated kitchen units that look [...]

I know a lot of my readers take particular interest in Northern Rock and their standard variable rates, so I thought i’d just give you folks a quick update.
I received a letter a few days ago from Northern Rock, informing me that they are going to pass on a 0.25% cut to their standard variable [...]

A few days ago I posted a list of Reasons Why I Don’t Use Letting Agents to find or manage any of my buy-to-let properties. I expected a mixed bag of responses, which is exactly what I got.
I got an interesting response from an Estate Agent called Justin, from over at Petter Barry. He [...]

I’ve just had one of my tenants move out after 4 years of tenancy. I’m in the process of finding a replacement, so I thought i’d provide a quick list to explain why I don’t use letting agents to find or manage tenants. Just for the record, the list is generated from personal experiences.

1. They’re [...]